12 Nov 1995: Guard Randall McDaniel of the Minnesota Vikings stands on the field during a game against the Arizona Cardinals at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. The Vikings won the game 34-28. Mandatory Credit: Stephen Dunn /Allsport

Eight years after his final NFL game, Randall McDaniel still cuts an imposing figure strolling into a suburban Minneapolis coffee shop in a black crew neck T-shirt, matching shorts and sneakers.

He is 44 years old now, stands 6 feet 3 and remains close to his playing weight of 276 pounds.

His arthritic joints occasionally ache. His elbows bear scars from turf burns and collisions playing 14 years in the mosh pit of helmets and humanity known as the line of scrimmage.

On this late July morning, though, McDaniel looks ready to break the Vikings’ huddle.

‘I could probably go out there for one play,’ he concedes, ‘but then the body would say ‘get out of here!’ ‘

Besides, McDaniel is too busy fulfilling the rest of his life to relive a playing career that comes full circle Saturday with his enshrinement into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

He traveled to Canton, Ohio, proud and humbled to be recognized among the sport’s greatest left guards and totally secure in his athletic afterlife.

McDaniel retired with his health relatively intact and his conscience free of the regret or cynicism that can plague ex-players struggling to script their second act.

Moreover, he is completely absorbed in forging a legacy as “Mr. McDaniel,” paraprofessional educator and mentor to fourth-graders in the Minnetonka school district.

“Teaching is probably the toughest job you’ll ever have — tougher than football,” he said. “But it’s more rewarding.”

McDaniel always knew he wanted to help kids learn how to read better and solve math problems, having struggled with both tasks growing up in Phoenix.

He volunteered in classrooms as an All-American at Arizona State in the late 1980s. With the Vikings in 1992, he became a teacher’s assistant at Pilgrim Lane Elementary School in Plymouth, even returning after his final two seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2000 and ’01, before Minnetonka hired him.

Former students with whom McDaniel maintains relationships can better assess his influence in the classroom than the enterprising kids who discovered he wore Vikings jersey No. 64.

Eleven years ago, Cameron Washington was a timid third-grader, afraid to raise his hand for help on assignments. With McDaniel’s encouragement, Washington overcame his shyness and sought answers from his teacher, gradually mastering the work his own way and gaining more confidence.

“I was always afraid of looking dumb or feeling dumb,” Washington recalled last month. “One of the biggest things he got across to me, that whole year, was that I didn’t have to be afraid to ask teachers questions or go ask for help.”

Washington, who was invited by McDaniel to attend next weekend’s induction ceremonies, is a rare University of Minnesota sophomore who can boast having a hall of fame football player on speed dial.

“It’s something that’s really cool,” he said.

”FOOTBALL IS JUST PART OF WHO I AM”

McDaniel never drifted through retirement chasing the game-day adrenaline rush or screaming at television commentators who blame breakdowns on the line instead of the fullback who missed a blocking assignment.

After 12 seasons with the Vikings, he has returned to the Metrodome just once, in 2006, when the team honored him with a spot in its Ring of Honor. His wife, Marianne, watches more games than McDaniel, who might look in for a half, always with the sound muted.

The decade that has passed since he played in Minnesota has liberated McDaniel from his status as a Vikings icon. He still gets a kick when enterprising students, most having been prodded by their parents, bring in biographies and pictures to share with their famous teacher.

” ‘Were you any good?’ they would ask,” McDaniel said. “I said, ‘I was OK.’ Then they would Google me and come in with all this stuff.

” ‘You weren’t just good. You were great,’ they’d say.

” ‘Yeah, I lied to you. I played a little bit.’

” ‘You played 14 years!’

“But I said all the living and things you’re going to do in your life, 14 years is just a small portion of that,” McDaniel continued. “Football’s just a part of who I am.”

He has an impressive resume to share.

“Randall was the best offensive guard that I ever saw in 25 years in the NFL,” declared former Vikings coach Jerry Burns, who was at the helm when the team drafted McDaniel in the first round (19th overall) in 1988.

Appraising offensive linemen is difficult in a sport whose observers usually focus on the ball and the person throwing, carrying or catching it.

Their names typically are limited to pregame introductions and penalty announcements. Few statistics are maintained for left guards, who must protect the blind side for right-handed throwing quarterbacks and outmuscle the beefiest defenders to open lanes for running backs.

Yet it was hard not to recognize McDaniel in his darkly tinted visor stonewalling tackles he pounced on from his jackknife stance, an unorthodox posture he developed to compensate for a knee injury early in his career.

“He had the worst stance in the history of stances,” said Vikings senior consultant Paul Wiggin. “I asked (former offensive line coach) John Michels about it once and he said, ‘If you’ve got a goose laying golden eggs, don’t mess with the goose.’ ”

McDaniel started 15 games his rookie season. In 1989, he began a streak of 202 consecutive starts. He appeared in a record 12 straight Pro Bowls and was named to the NFL’s All-Decade Team of the 1990s.

He was versatile enough in 1997 to become the first guard to catch a touchdown pass in the Pro Bowl.

Things to ponder about McDaniel’s dominance:

He helped six different ball carriers rush for more than 1,000 yards and five quarterbacks eclipse 3,000 yards in a season.

In 1998, he allowed only 1 1/2 sacks while the Vikings’ offense averaged 5.4 yards per carry over the left side, racking up a then-record 556 points during a 15-1 season.

His contemporaries describe McDaniel as a once-in-a-generation star whose combination of strength, speed, intelligence and competitiveness made him incomparable.

“He was a phenomenal athlete who happened to play offensive line,” said Mark Schlereth, who played guard for 12 years and now is an NFL analyst for ESPN.

“Watching film of Randall, we used to joke just throw it out the window because you couldn’t replicate anything he did. He was just a freak.”

Perhaps the most credible assessment comes from former Tampa Bay defensive tackle Warren Sapp, who clashed with McDaniel twice a year from 1995-99 before they became teammates.

“He was the standard by which all others will be judged,” Sapp said. “I’ve seen grown men shaking in their boots in meetings when they learned they had to go up against Randall.”

Sapp was a notorious trash talker who relished goading opponents into tit-for-tat exchanges between plays. But he was able to elicit only an occasional smile from McDaniel.

“I used to drag people into my world. You either talked to me or you hated me talking to you. He never played that game,” Sapp recalled ruefully.

At the time, Burns was skeptical of using a first-round pick to select a guard over a skill position player but acknowledged being blown away by McDaniel’s talent and demeanor as a rookie.

McDaniel said he improved and gained confidence every practice battling all-pro linemen such as Keith Millard, Chris Doleman and later John Randle.

Drills would halt and the team would gravitate to the epic one-on-one clashes between Randle and McDaniel, who hated the theater but never backed down.

“My job was to shut him up early before he got started. It was always game mode when you went against him,” McDaniel said. “It was miserable.”

McDaniel’s memories of games and seasons blur in a narrative that spans three decades.

Thirteen consecutive playoff starts included the shocking and disappointing overtime loss to the Atlanta Falcons in the ’98 NFC championship game. There was his bitter breakup with former coach Dennis Green, who chose not to renegotiate McDaniel’s contract and cut him during a salary cap purge in 2000.

More fondly, McDaniel remembers the camaraderie he shared with his fellow linemen, fleeting moments in the locker room when life dominated conversation.

“The games are the games. The fun I had was with the guys when you’re just sitting there chatting until you had to go to meetings,” he said. “No one ever talked about football. It was, ‘Hey, what are we doing later?’ Just hanging out.”

Cris Carter said McDaniel’s quiet nature and eschewing of media attention belied a fierce prankster who led hazing rituals during training camp — taping rookies to goal posts and betting on whether they could chug a gallon of milk without vomiting.

“He was notorious for terrorizing the dormitories,” said Carter, who came to Minnesota in McDaniel’s fourth season.

He also hustled first-year players by challenging them to a 40-yard dash, often leaving running backs and receivers in his wake.

“I would never race him because I saw how fast he was,” Carter said. “I could beat him, but I would have to race as hard as I could and I didn’t want anyone to know that.”

UNEASY IN THE SPOTLIGHT

The stress of being elected to the Hall of Fame pales in comparison to the six-month buildup to the event.

There are deadlines for sending out invitations, designing seating charts, getting measured for the bronze bust and, of course, trying to thank everyone in a 15-minute speech.

“It’s like planning for two weddings,” McDaniel said.

The most important duty for an inductee is selecting a presenter to introduce him to the crowd and a national television audience.

McDaniel agonized between Michels, his first offensive line coach with the Vikings, and OK Fulton, his high school athletics director and assistant principal.

He invited Michels from his home in Tennessee but ultimately chose Fulton, who made the biggest impact on McDaniel at a crucial time.

“He was the first teacher who wanted to get to know the young man and not just the football player,” McDaniel said. “He cared about what I did. And he always said it was important for me to be the first in my family to go to college.”

Earlier this year, the two shared an emotional conversation as Fulton, who was battling cancer, accepted the invitation the same day the 76-year-old learned he was free of the disease.

“I was so absolutely flattered I had to cry about it,” Fulton said. “I was overwhelmed and still am. He’s as fine a man you could ever meet in your life.”

Most offensive linemen roam in packs. Their success is measured by a sum of their working parts. They share common stoicism and anonymity in a chest-thumping league bereft of both.

One certainly can understand the uneasiness McDaniel carries into the spotlight.

“I’m so used to doing everything with four other guys standing around, to stand up there by myself and accept it, that’s a tall task,” he said. “It’s not about me up there. I couldn’t have done anything without those five guys playing as one.”

There is one way he can preserve that notion.

“If I get up there and pass out, I’ll be the happiest man in the world,” McDaniel says, laughing. “If you pass out, they can’t make you speak.

“No, it’ll be good.”

RANDALL MCDANIEL, HALL OF FAMER

Born: Dec. 19, 1964, Phoenix

Resides: Excelsior

Height/weight: 6-3, 276 pounds

Position: Guard

NFL: Minnesota Vikings (1988-2000), Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2000-01)

College: Arizona State University (College Football Hall of Fame inductee, 2009)

Brian Murphy has been on the Pioneer Press sports staff since 2000, migrating from the Detroit Free Press, where he covered police, courts and sports for four years. Murphy was the Minnesota Wild/NHL beat writer from 2002 to 2008 and has covered the Vikings as a reporter and columnist since 2009. Murphy is a Detroit native and Wayne State University graduate.

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